ARRI Rental ALFA lenses on “The Amateur”

CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) has his life turned upside down when his wife is killed in a London terror attack. Frustrated by the agency’s muted response, he overrides his remit and takes to the field, hunting down his wife’s killers. This is the premise of “The Amateur,” directed by James Hawes and shot by Martin Ruhe ASC.

Having already worked with ARRI Rental on the George Clooney-directed features “Midnight Sky” (65 mm format with DNA lenses) and “The Boys in the Boat” (large format with ALFA anamorphics), Ruhe tapped them again for “The Amateur.” He says, “I really enjoyed my previous experience with the ALFA lenses because they are true anamorphics with a 2x squeeze, unlike many large-format anamorphics. I love the rendering, the bokeh, and the softness they have. Close-ups on faces just look so beautiful; they have such a presence on the screen. I shot tests and James loved them, so we decided on ALFAs.”

Ruhe’s choice of camera was the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF. He recalls, “Early on, James and I discussed how the movie is split into two parts. The first is Charlie Heller and his wife, and his grief when she dies, and for that we wanted very composed camerawork. The camera moves, but it’s all dolly work and very precise. Then the second part is when he goes into action and for that we wanted to be more handheld, so the ALEXA Mini LF was perfect because it’s compact and lightweight. We also knew we’d be going to a lot of different locations and we’d have to live with the confinement of those places, so having a small camera package was handy.”

The production was based in London, where studio scenes were shot and locations found that could double for Virginia, the CIA’s home state. Ruhe says, “There are a couple of shots where Heller arrives at the CIA building, which we filmed on a parking lot in London and then visual effects put the CIA building in behind. We went to Paris and we went to Marseilles, which doubled for parts of Russia. Some of the interiors set in Turkey with the Inquiline character were around Marseilles, although we also shot in Istanbul for when we first see that character, and Turkey doubled for other parts of Russia. It was all a big puzzle!”

Ruhe continues, “What made the schedule a bit more complicated was that we had to shut down because of the actors’ strike. We stopped shooting in July and only resumed in December, which meant it was winter. We lost a few locations and moved some scenes to the studio; they made changes to the script in terms of where certain scenes take place. Every location had its own challenges. We had around 150 sets; our set list was that long. It's a lot of different places to shoot in over the course of 60 days, so we had to be quick.”

Many scenes involved more than one camera and Ruhe set things up so that he could be involved in the operating while also overseeing what others were doing. He explains, “I operate the A-camera myself and usually I have a B-camera/Steadicam operator with me. I often put two monitors on my camera so I can see what the B-camera is doing and tell them over the intercom if I want to change anything. Some action stuff was on a U-Crane and we used a couple of car mounts, but in general the camera was always quite close to Rami because we wanted to experience this world, the places he's going to, with him. That’s an advantage of anamorphic large format; you can be close to a character and still see a lot of the world around them.”

The final sequence of the film takes place on open water and was particularly challenging to shoot. Ruhe says, “Originally it was going to be filmed off Riga, Latvia, but it was moved to Marseilles after our delay because Riga was too cold in winter. It was tricky, because we had four or five cameras on all these different boats and dinghies circling around the ship of the bad guy, and a camera on a helicopter. The scene takes place at night but I wanted to shoot it in the last light of the day, so that we could still see the water around them and use those final moments of natural light. To shoot all of that and get the action right in one moment, during one sunset, was nerve-racking, but it worked out really well.”

Ruhe carried a full set of ALFA lenses, finding that focal lengths around 50 mm gave the best perspective for shots following Malek. He notes, “In addition to the standard ALFAs, we had a few ALFA V1 variants at key focal lengths that were tuned to stay sharp further across the frame. So, there was a 50 mm V1 alongside the standard 47 mm, a 70 mm V1 alongside the 72 mm, and a 105 mm V1 alongside the 108 mm. The V1s are useful if you want to put people more to the edge of the frame, or you have a big close-up with an eye over on one side of the frame and you want to keep focus on that eye. We also had an 85 mm ‘Portrait’ ALFA that I first used on ‘The Boys in the Boat,’ which goes the other way and is a more extreme detune than standard ALFAs, designed for center-focused compositions.”

Although the film incorporates significant visual effects, Ruhe reports that the VFX team were happy with the detuned look of the ALFAs. He says, “Often I was shooting at T2.8 so the edges would drop off quite drastically, but they embraced it. They mapped the ALFAs so it was pretty easy and there was never a concern about our choice of lenses. They loved the scope of our look and the two departments worked together really well.”

An example that Ruhe cites of practical and visual effects being successfully combined is a sequence showing a suspended glass swimming pool breaking and falling dozens of storeys to the ground. The cinematographer says, “We rebuilt that pool in the stage and we could collapse it. We put a stuntman in the pool with a handheld camera in the water and a crane up above. When you see the pool collapsing in the top shot, with the body falling away, that’s a real person in real water, and then there is a digital takeover. It was a complex sequence with several locations stitched together, but we made a big effort to shoot real elements and combine them with the visual effects, so it was a great collaboration.”

Reflecting on his relationship with ARRI Rental, Ruhe says, “Over the years, Russell Allen and Simon Surtees in the UK have always been a great help and made things possible; they’re actually supporting my current project as well. I live in Berlin so I’ve also worked with ARRI Rental Berlin and Christoph Hoffsten there, who often modifies lenses. I love working with all of them, and the positivity behind their lens developments. It’s great that ARRI Rental listens and comes up with these special lens iterations for DPs. They understand the character we want, and that it’s not all about perfection.”